1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a control button assembly for positioning an operating rod of a vehicle door lock to "lock" and "unlock" a vehicle door, and more particularly, to a control button assembly that has a sill mounted sleeve member with resilient depending fingers that are biased radially inwardly to frictionally grip the elongate stem of an upstanding button member that is connected to an operating rod of a vehicle door lock, with the gripping action of the fingers on the button serving to strongly resist any tendency of the control button and the operating rod to shift from set positions due to vibration and other movements that are a normal consequence of vehicle operation.
2. PRIOR ART
It is customary to provide the door structures of vehicles such as automobiles, vans, trucks and the like with lock mechanisms of the type that can be locked and unlocked by shifting an operating rod that is housed within interior portions of the door. The operating rod typically extends substantially vertically within the door structure and has a threaded upper end region that projects through a sill opening that is formed in the door structure near the bottom level of a window opening that is defined by the door structure. An actuator button is normally threaded onto the upper end region of the operating rod and is used to manually move the operating rod to lock and unlock the door. Depressing the button to its lowermost or "locked" position causes the operating rod to set components of the lock mechanism in a locked configuration. Raising the button to its uppermost or "unlocked" position causes the operating rod to effect unlocking of the lock mechanism.
While the actions of many types of vehicle door lock mechanisms tend to provide a retaining or detenting function for maintaining an actuator button and its associated operating rod in their unlocked and/or locked positions, some vehicle door lock mechanisms do not provide a desirable degree of retaining or detenting action (i.e., some locks fail to securely and reliably hold their actuator buttons and their associated operating rods in set positions). Where the retaining or detenting action of a door lock is insufficient, the vehicle's operator may, upon occasion, believe that all of the vehicle's doors are locked when, in fact, one or more of the lock mechanisms actually may have vibrated to their unlocked positions thereby leaving the vehicle unsecured. Vice versa, the vehicle operator may have intended to leave a door momentarily unlocked, but may discover that his shutting the door has so vibrated the lock mechanism as to permit the actuator button and the operating rod to move under the influence of gravity to lock the door.